Content delivery over the internet continues to improve every day. Computer users can receive e-mail, news, games, entertainment, music, books, and web pages—all with a simple Internet connection (and with improved quality on a broadband connection). Internet users also have access to a plethora of services such as maps, shopping links, images, blogs, local search, satellite images, group discussions, hosted content, and e-mail. When an Internet user accesses these respective services, the content provided by the service is typically related to a particular topic that can, for example, be divided up into various content categories. By determining the category of content provided to an internet user on a particular service, a service provider can give the Internet user additional content and/or advertisements focused on the category desired by the user, thus improving the user's experience.
For example, on the Internet some content providers include search functionality that is based on keywords entered by the user seeking information. This user query can be an indicator of the type of information of interest to the user. By comparing the user query to a list of keywords specified by an advertiser, it is possible to provide targeted ads to the user. An example of such a system is AdWords™ offered by Google, Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.). An example of such a system is described in part in U.S. Pat. No. 6,816,857, entitled “Meaning-based advertising and document relevance determination,” issued Nov. 9, 2004, currently assigned to the assignee of the present application and which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
Alternatively, a content provider can serve advertisements to a user based on a determination of an advertisement most closely related to Internet content such as a web page. This can be done, for example, by associating the content of the web page to a set of one or more advertising keywords closely related to the page content, and serving targeted ads to a user of that web page. An example of such as a system is the AdSense™ system offered by Google, Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.). An example of such a system is in part described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,136,875, entitled “Serving advertisements based on content,” issued Nov. 14, 2006 to the assignee of the present application and which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
Further improvement in the targeting of advertisements to content are possible, especially when keywords are broad and can relate to multiple possible topics of interest to a user and an advertiser.